The top players don't make guides here anymore as they can do it elsewhere - and make money while doing it. Same goes for posting useful tips. Some of the content editors - not all - use the news part of AJ as a personal self-promotion tool. This is really bad as it makes the site look very unprofessional. Not everyone notices this.

I think is the main problem really. The top players don't look to help the community but instead is after the money involved in the game.

I didn't have time to read through a lot of the posts so sorry if this has already been said, but heres some ideas I have:

What if you guys lowered the rating requirements of junkies access? Let's say duelist range. This, of course, would require more moderators that are active so that flamefests, trolls, ragers, etc can be dealt with more quickly.

On top of this, there needs to be a few new admins or the old ones need to start becoming more active; although I am for new admins personally. There is an absolute NEED for admins who play the game currently and can have a strong presence in the community. Without this, we will never be able to get some great ideas onto the front page of AJ such as guides and video guides.

Next, even though I already touched on this a bit, I would say that it would be simply incredible if said new admins (or old admins becoming active again) changed some of the sites layout to allow guides and helpful information be seen before anything else.

I'm the perfect example of what Pugna describes. The average player. Mr Nobody.I don't mind the access restriction.

Ofc if I had access I'd probably ask alot of questions but it's not that important.
'Cause if this website was perfect, or atleast "not that bad" I wouldn't need to ask questions.
Guides, or other ppl questions would answer it for me.
There's not any question I could ask that cannot be answered in a well-written guide or class FAQ / discussion between high-rated players.

This rating requirement was probably a good idea in the first place, and you should prolly keep it. It's gonna work if some guides are written, and class roles / spells / abilities / tricks are discussed and explained in class forums.
Same goes with strategy and setups.

As for the website itself, I only have two words to describe it, two words an ingame friend of mine uses every time he wants to speak about AJ : "Arena Jungle".

This website has become, for every people who hasn't access to it and used to read it from an exterior PoV, a zoo, a carnival of kids flaming each other.
I must confess it's pretty entertaining to read, and I often have a big smile on my face when reading some retarded comments, posted by people who think they're one hundred times more clever than "the average casual baddie".

It has come to a point, when I really thought every glad-R1 player should be a elitist retard spending his life playing this game all-day long. And I was actually amazed the first time I chatted about politics whith a mutli-glad player (if you read this Mr shaman, you're definitely a great guy).

Regarding montizing guides : this is not a real issue. There's a room on the internet for free stuff, even if people earn money with the same activity as yours. Free stuff is always needed, even if it's only an entry point, with lower quality / quantity than the non-free stuff.

What's the point for an average player to come and visit this website nowadays ? As mentionned, guides are outdated and they can't even ask questions (which, as I wrote, is not necessarily an issue 'cause the question you ask yourself has prolly been addressed before).

If you ever open gates to non-rated people, you'll have to moderate heavily so it doesn't becoming the flamefest official forums are atm. This might not be the solution. The solution is : promote content, change the way this site is structured.Writing a guide should bring you viewers, donators. Don't think the average WoW player is ungrateful. He's definitely not.

I heard alot of people complaining on their stream about "this guy has more viewer than me even if he doesn't play good". Yeah, sure. He's more famous than you are. Why ? Many factors... Some of them you can't do shit about (charism ? jokes ? overall behaviour ?) but you also got livers to react : How many people would come watch your stream, just to say something nice about the latest video guide you released on AJ ? I'm sure tons of them would, really.

I myself used to consider Hydra pretty badly for example (for my own completely subjective reasons). And would never have been watching his stream. But when I saw his post regarding priests mentionned on Twitter and the great job he did summarizing problems, I came to his stream only to thank him in the chat for what he did, and stayed for like an hour.

Blizzard initiated the virtuous circle by communicating well through this Holinka guy, showing they care about PvP.Now it's your turn to act. Reorganizing this website which is THE WoW PvP portal. Acting more efficiently to promote PvP.Then it's gonna be OUR (low-rated players) turn to act : by giving active glad-helpers rewards, whether it's money, viewers, comments, popularity or whatever they diserve.

EDIT : my post misses suggestions, forgive me.
1/ Moderation
- If you don't open the site to every registered user and keep the rating requirement : keep the report feature opened for everyone (even if not registered, put a captcha to avoid bots maybe). Make the "explanation" field mandatory. People have to explain why they report things. (dunno how your system work it might already be the case)
- Be harsh. Really. People look at this website as a lawless enclave. It has to stop. Keep flaming / bashing / trolling / gif posting in a reserved section. Remove this section from the "recent topics" widgets in front page. End season drama could ever happen and trolls would be happy. The average user won't even notice it. Perfect for everyone.
- Warn ppl making biased comments regardless if they're glads or not. We're all aware of class-balance issues. We all know 1 week after changes go to PTR which ability is retarded. There's no need to keep posting in every thread that warlocks are bad or RoP is retarded. We all are aware of that. Make one thread "Why RoP should be changed" so that Blizzard has a place to refer to with pros and cons. But when someone is derailing a thread with "and warlocks still suck" (which is going to end up with "You were OP 11 seasons blabla now you can be bad") => warn him. Next derail => ban him for 1 week.

2/ Promote content
- Make a widget on the front page. Writing a guide should put your profile in front page, together with ppl who helped you writing it- New video guide => news + short text-interview.What do you address in your video ? Who are you ? Why did you do that ? Where do you stream ? What do you stream ? What's your YouTube channel ? What should ppl expect from your YouTube channel ? Are you opened to answer questions in game ? What's your paypal if ppl wanna donate ?
- +rep is stupid. Stop it or change the way it works. Writing a guide should be the equivalent of 100 reps, or smth like that.

3/ Clean up
- Tidy your room. This site is just a whole messed-up forum. Spring comes, the best time to tidy your place IRL. Same goes here I suppose. Get rid of old guides, useless sections. Remove stupid posts. Reorganize forums (would need a whole thread to discuss about that)
- Ban ppl obivously trolling every post they make
- start-off a brand new +rep system or at least reset it. Showing that things have changed, that it's a brand new site.
- and keep things clean. Every time you read a topic (as a moderator), ask yourself if the comment is useful. If it's not, it should be removed or at least "hidden" (as in the "spoil" feature). If it's a joke or a private comment "glad to see you there !" it's no big deal, but disturbs reading if you're looking for a guide.